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Monday, July 16, 2012

Movie Review: The Amazing Spider-Man

Squeaky, squeaky.

The Amazing Spider-Man movie was not very anticipated by myself. All the hype has been around the Dark Knight Returns a.k.a DKR (a.k.a what I refer to as Donkey Kong Returns since that has the same initials ^^.) Even one of the trailers to this new Spider-Man movie was that of the Dark Knight. And, if you've listened to any of our recent podcast episodes, you'll know that I have been 'affectionately' calling Spider-Man "Sneaker-Man" because of his new outfit. I remember seeing a trailer of this Spider-Man movie, recalling the less-than-great quality of the visual effects. It wasn't looking good.

Well, oh well. This movie was FAR better than what I was expecting. Credit goes to the two leads who played Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy: Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone. They did a fantastic job epitomizing these characters. Sally Fields was wonderful as May Parker, too.

The main plot is that Peter wants to find out more about his father (who disappeared a long time ago). He visits the workplace of Dr. Curt Conners who worked with him, gets bit by a radioactive spider, discovers equations in his father's notes that help Conners turn himself into the Lizard and then he has to stop the Lizard from trying to turn the rest of New York City into lizard people, too.

I gotta say, I still wasn't impressed by the visuals that switch to Spider-Man's perspective as he swings through the city. They were much better than what was in the Amazing Spider-Man trailer, much more polished and refined, but something about it still felt clunky and out of place.

My favorite moments reflected the awkwardness of the characters: When Peter gets bullied by Flash and when he asks Gwen to go out- it was so awkward but believable because of that. I liked how Peter had a bit of a smart mouth. He can be a talkative character that cracks a lot of jokes in the comics and there was a nice reflection of that.

The main villain is Dr. Curt Conners, a.k.a. the Lizard. He was a decent villain. There is a parallel to the recent Amazing Spider-Man comics where Peter is trying to save Curt Conners, too, and turn him back into his normal self, but in both instances, nothing ever works out exactly the way Spidey hopes it would.

It was kind of weird to have the establishment of Uncle Ben's death in and near this convenience store, but it actually ties in with the later visited moment of Peter needing to pick up eggs for his aunt and the theme of learning to become responsible. Peter didn't want to pay for his milk shake but eventually he bought the carton of eggs.

The fight scenes were cool. I especially liked the one that happened in the sewer. This was a really good movie. I was a complete sap and cried when each character died. I laughed at the jokes. All around, I thoroughly enjoyed watching this movie and I recommend you see it too.